European Cinema Minutes.                                                           03/14/02

Dr Reimer returned our midterm exams and short essays.

He talked about the main mistakes that he noticed. He insisted on proof reading, on a copy free of errors. He also explained to us that we should not use the passive voice too much. On the contrary, we should use the active voice when writing essays in general, because we have to express our opinion on the subject.

Then he answered the questions of the test.

1-a- We had to say what we knew of the film. That the clip was not a good example of neo realism.

1-b- It was about poetic realism. Why?

2-a- Ingmar Bergman’s film Through the Glass Darkly, insisted more on the impression of enclosure, restrictions. The film was a better choice than the screenplay to convey Bergman’s ideas.

2-b- Fassbinder, does uses a camera that stays static. It reflects the malaise of the German nation during the Cold war.

3-a- The camera is static. The scene we watched is a division between the first happy part and the tragic part. The train comes slowly in the concentration camp. The atmosphere is dark and gloomy.

3-b- We had to say that in this scene Carmen appears to Antonio, the documentary ends and the fiction begins when she enters the room as from her appearance, she is a fictional character.  (even though we do not know this until later).

4-a-  The two deathbed scenes are a moment of peace in the frenetic pace of the film. They are also scenes when Lola can actually change her destiny and the destiny of Manni by her own power.

4-b- The moped had been stolen. She took a taxi once and she arrived late, it was not a good idea. In addition to that, the whole film is about running against time, so the image of Lola running is very important.

Then Dr Reimer moved on to the “Story and Myth” in films.

He asked us what the word story could make us think of. Students answered that the chain of events was important in a story. The themes, the situations, the ideology too. The back-story of the main character is also very important. We might not know him or her yet but a character can have his own story.

Story can also be used to explain a film.  For example in German pale Mother, by Helma Sanders- Brahms, 1980. The mother tells a Grimm fairy tale to her daughter. We understand what happened in Germany during World War II through insertion of this dark tale.

Wings Of desire  1987 by Wim Wenders. Takes place in Berlin, during the cold War, shows Berliners are experiencing the effect of World War II. We all have stories. The film shows us snippets of individual stories as seen through the eyes and ears of angels wandering in post-war Berlin.

Love Story, in 1970 by Arthur Hiller. the beginning of the film when a young man is going to tell the story of his dead fiancé.   The film is a classic example of story in film, asking the question, “where do I begin?”. 

Next class, we will watch Black Orpheus.